How Did The US Become ‘A Proto-Soviet Surveillance State?’

America, Communism, Socialism, The Military, The State, War

Fred Reed demands to know “What Have the Bastards Done to My Country?”:

“This is the country that produced Peggy Lee and Tampa Red and the ‘fitty-sedden Chevy, the country that spits techno-whizz golf carts onto Mars just like it was even possible, that brought the hamburger to gorgeous bejuiced perfection and invented most of the modern world. It’s the home of sand-lot baseball and Little Peggy March and BB guns and Tasty Freeze. It is, in a phrase, one fine place.”

“How did it sink to being a proto-Soviet surveillance state that builds vast awful Visitor Centers in the style of a Hitlerian mauseoleum [sic]? You can’t go to the john without a photo ID anymore. Something ain’t right.”

Reeds’ “Thoughts in an Insurrectionist Vein” are “here.

Updated: Amanpour Omits Genocide Of Boers By British

Britain, Criminal Injustice, History, Justice, Media, South-Africa

I watched Amanpour’s CNN’s program on genocide. No mention was made of the genocide of Boers by the British during the Second Boer War. Fifteen percent of the Afrikaner population was rounded up, interned, and starved to death–27,000 women and children.

Apparently after some controversy, Amanoour even mentioned the poor Armenians whose wholesale slaughter is usually denied because the slaughterers, our “allies” the Turks, demand the denial of that Holocaust. National interest and all that stuff.

Here is a rather common image from the annals of the Second Boer War (1899-1902). The caption follows, below.

“The young Lizzie van Zyl who died in the Bloemfontein concentration camp: She was a frail, weak little child in desperate need of good care. Yet, because her mother was one of the “undesirables” due to the fact that her father neither surrendered nor betrayed his people, Lizzie was placed on the lowest rations and so perished with hunger that, after a month in the camp, she was transferred to the new small hospital. Here she was treated harshly. The English disposed doctor and his nurses did not understand her language and, as she could not speak English, labeled her an idiot although she was mentally fit and normal. One day she dejectedly started calling for her mother, when a Mrs Botha walked over to her to console her. She was just telling the child that she would soon see her mother again, when she was brusquely interrupted by one of the nurses who told her not to interfere with the child as she was a nuisance.”

Update: JP’s heartfelt comment hereunder with respect to how Afrikaners were treated warrants mention of another aspect of genocide, salient in the plight of the Afrikaners, then as now: demonization. The British liked the Bantu; and hated the Boer. They demonized the Boers as retarded and stupid and would hang notices around the necks of Afrikaner kids caught speaking Afrikaans at school: “I am a donkey.” (Source: The White Tribe of Africa: South Africa In Perspective by David Harrison, p. 48) Need I mention the Bantu’s “Kill the Boer” slogans?

Martyrdom In Mumbai Un-Jewish

Iraq, Islam, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Judaism & Jews, Terrorism

Rabbi B. Isaacson, my father—also a scholar of Judaism—imparted a bit of Jewish Halacha (law) during the bi-weekly telephone conversation I put through to South Africa, where he (sadly) resides.

The topic: Chabad Jews and their outpost in India, which is a hotbed of Jihad, anti-Hindu and other.

But first, with society’s unfaithful watchdogs (media) pretending that the larger population is statistically as likely as are Jews to be the target of Islamic terrorists—Mark Steyn’s wry reminder of the reality of anti-Jewish Jihad is warranted (via Jihad Watch):

At the Chabad House, the murdered Jews were described in almost all the Western media as “ultra-Orthodox,” “ultra-” in this instance being less a term of theological precision than a generalized code for “strange, weird people, nothing against them personally, but they probably shouldn’t have been over there in the first place.”

Are they stranger or weirder than their killers? Two “inflamed moderates” entered the Chabad House, shouted “Allahu Akbar!,” tortured the Jews and murdered them, including the young rabbi’s pregnant wife. Their 2-year-old child escaped because of a quick-witted (non-Jewish) nanny who hid in a closet and then, risking being mowed down by machine-gun fire, ran with him to safety.
The Times was being silly in suggesting this was just an “accidental” hostage opportunity – and not just because, when Muslim terrorists capture Jews, it’s not a hostage situation, it’s a mass murder-in-waiting.

[Snip]

Dad, who considers Chabadniks a dubious sect, avers that they should not have set up a post in India.

For long—since the 8th century—Jihadis have waged pitched battles against the “infidels” of India. India is a dangerous place, especially for Jews.

Jews don’t missionize; Mormons do. The object of the outpost was to provide a kosher meal for Jewish travelers.

More significantly, Jews don’t martyr themselves. Jewish law forbids the wanton endangerment, or squandering, of life. Giving one’s life unnecessarily is a sin in Judaism. The Palestinian culture of death banks on the Jewish culture of life to sustain its murderous momentum.

According to the Talmud, “To save one life is like saving the world.”

SIDEBAR: As a matter interest, this verse was later on claimed by the Quran, which quickly qualified the otherwise-universal Jewish credo. The Qur’anic ayah states:

On that account: We ordained
For the Children of Israel
That if anyone slew
A person—unless it be
For murder or for spreading
Mischief in the land—
It would be as if
He slew the whole people… (Verse 5:32)

“Mischief in the land” gives the Muslim wide discretion in killing Jews.

Back to Mumbai’s Jewish martyrs: Had they followed Jewish law, demurs dad, they would not have endangered themselves and their child.

Jewish law calls for martyrdom under these three contingencies only:

MURDER: If a Jew is instructed to kill another human being on pain of death, he must refuse, and prepare to die.

The Talmud states (in Sanhedrin 74a): “It happened with Rava: A man came to Rava and told him that the governor of the city had ordered that he (the man) slay a certain man or himself suffer death, and Rava said to him: ‘Rather than slay another person, you must permit yourself to be slain, for how do you know that your blood is redder than his, perhaps his blood is redder than yours?'” [Beautiful metaphor]

IDOLATRY. If a Jew is threatened with conversion to an idolatrous deity or death, he must choose death.

There is a famous example that can be found in the Babylonian Talmud Gittin 57b, the apocryphal II Maccabees 7, and other sources about Hannah and her seven sons, a story associated with the holiday of Hanukkah. Rather than prostrate before an idol of Zeus placed in the Second Temple, Hannah defies the Greek-Assyrian King Antiochus IV and allows her sons to be killed one by one before she herself is killed.

[Wikipedia]

SEXUAL IMMORALITY. If a Jewish woman is threatened with rape on pain of death, she must prepare to die.

[Source: Monty Python, “The Life of Brian.” Brian the Hebrew is told by his mother that his father was a Roman. Brian cries, “Tell me you were raped, Mother.” She/he replies, “Well, at first.” Sorry dad, I couldn’t help that.]

These teachings are expounded on in Wikipedia (bar “The Life of Brian” citation.)

Unexplained is their proper application. No other rabbinical authority that I know of has applied the teachings to the strange specter—and subsequent martyrdom—of members of a Chabad mission in Mumbai.

In any event, according to Rabbi Isaacson, had the unfortunate Chabadniks adhered to the letter and spirit of the Jewish law, they would not have decamped to India and died there.

Cold Contempt: Coldplay Vs. Virtuoso Satriani

Celebrity, Ethics, Law, Morality, Music, Pop-Culture, The Zeitgeist

I’m not even going to bother being legally correct and prefacing this with an “allegedly.” (Okay, I will, if I must.)

Coldplay, a crappy band of unmerry noisemakers, about whom I wrote the definitive piece, “Coldplay’s Contrapuntal Incompetence,” has allegedly ripped off Joe Satriani’s instrumental, “If I Could Fly.” (He sure soars musically.)

Although these knaves claim Frida Kahlo inspired “Viva La Vida,” it’s abundantly clear that coldcrap’s muse came not from the Marxist, Mexican artist, but, allegedly, from a good old American boy’s brilliance.

Listen (and resume reading after the clip):

This is an outrage I feel with every fiber, etc., etc. As when one reader wrote in to say a big-name radio talker was practically reading one of my WND columns on the air, claiming the words (chords) and ideas (chord progression) as his own.

There’s more, as you know.

As I once wrote, “The marketplace doesn’t adjudicate the quality of art or pop culture—it does no more than offer an aggregate snapshot of the trillions of subjective preferences enacted by consumers. Aguilera (Christina) probably sells more than Ashkenazy (Vladimir) ever did. Britney outdoes Borodin. For some, this will be faith-inspiring, for others deeply distressing.” (February 7, 2003)

Mediocre minds need to feed on their less-known betters. More often than not, the former have managed to climb to the top by catering to vulgar, popular tastes. (For example: The taste for blood Boobus developed facilitated not only the Iraq invasion, but careers for many a war harpy.)

They can steal with impunity from their betters, who’ll never attain the power to be able to sue.

But now the parasite has enraged the host.

Satriani’s law suit is gratifying, although I don’t expect Coldplay to lose face. They’ll be graced, rather than disgraced–much like Paris Hilton after copulating in public.

For fans of good, neoclassical, instrumental rock, I’ll ask the spouse, a formidable composer and instrumentalist himself, to say a word or two about Satriani. He agrees, though, that I’ve covered Coldplay quite adequately.

From “Coldplay’s Contrapuntal Incompetence comes a reminder of what we’re dealing with:

“Coldplay plays only one or two chords. When they get going, the band musters three. It’s the equivalent of ‘Baa, Baa, Black Sheep,’ maybe ‘Three Blind Mice,’ although these nursery rhymes reveal better melodic progression. Indeed, some harmony might have helped Coldplay’s caterwauling, but consonance, like counterpoint, is nowhere apparent in their ‘music.'”

“The front man also fancies himself a keyboardist. He doubles over the instrument with immense concentration, leading the listener to expect some virtuosity. The sounds that escape from beneath stiff digits are as tortured as a toddler’s hammering away on a play-play piano.”

“Slackers like Coldplay deserve cold contempt. Colorlessly they drone on, sustaining one or two pitches and exhibiting zero proficiency on any of the instruments they belabor. The bassist picks notes in a pedestrian fashion and the guitarist strums simplistically, producing a cacophony with almost no melodic momentum or variation. At the guitarist’s feet lie 10 to 15 effects pedals. But a slight echo in the monotone is the only evidence that he makes use of these sonic supports.”

“The singer openly boasts that to record one of their trills, the band needed hundreds of takes—so many that they eventually gave up. Incapable of playing such simple dirge from beginning to end, our towering talents resorted to a computer to help them piece the bits together. Audiences cheer their admission of incompetence much like they revel in the president’s unfamiliarity with the English language.”